HOT: Janice Combs (a.k.a P-Diddy‘s mom) in the front row at Dennis Basso. She looked absolutely amazing! And Anna Wintour‘s running exit with four assistants at her heels from the same show. How divalicious is that!
NOT: I wanted to run out of the show myself but for different reasons! I completely abhor Dennis Basso’s use of fur! TGATP is strictly anti-fur as there are so many good looking faux alternatives. Why brutally and needlessly butcher animals when nowadays you can get a great fake fur that looks real?
HOT: While this year’s Fashion Week has been somehow less fabulous than usual, (not sure if it is the impending move to Lincoln Center or the pallor cast over the proceedings by the death of Alexander McQueen) the parties and lounges have been a blast! I especially enjoyed the Jimmy Choo 24:7 fete as Tamara Mellon was a real sweetie! I am now actively coveting a couple of the shoes in the line, especially all the kitten heeled ones. What a marvelous idea by the Daily to have their lounge at a spa! After an arduous winter and five days of rushing from shows to presentations to parties, it was pure bliss to be treated to a spay tan and a healthy lunch from Blue Dog Cafe. Despite expected crowds, the best lounge was the Nintendo DSi/DSi XL lounge that was, thankfully, pretty empty when we arrived, allowing us to breeze through the featured manicures, massages, and Temptu Airbrush Makeup applications. Temptu provided their machines for the gift bag if you were lucky enough to score one. (I will be reviewing it in the coming days.) Coveroo was also on hand to trick out our DSis for us. (The DSis are being given out too but extremely arbitrarily.) I got an awesome fairy for mine, a design that I would love to have tattooed somewhere! As a self-confessed Nintendo addict, I was thrilled to try out the upcoming Nintendo DS XL, which I will review when it actually launches. The on-site Nintendo expert got me hooked on Super Mario Brothers, which they kindly gave me a copy of. Everyone was just really fun and it was a lounge that you actually felt like hanging out in for a spell. One Nintendo staffer was so nice she even gave me her personal copy of a Professor Layton game! Another great lounge was the Spanx Lounge, where the oft hilarious Ally, offered a preview of the new Men’s Spanx and the new Spanx Swimwear line. As I live at the beach in the summer, I want the entire swimwear line! It is all just gorgeous offering support with elegance! And Sears/Kmart also previewed their new wares for next fall. I will definitely be adding some of their adorable accessories, like the handbags and brightly colored fingerless gloves, to next year’s fall wardrobe. In addition, the Vevant folks were fantastic with Anne Taylor (yes, that’s her real name) giving massages that sent you floating out of their on-site booth!
NOT: Lounges that are far from Bryant Park and run by frazzled interns! The Robert Verdi Lounge (at 247 West 30th on the 12th Fl) is miles away from Bryant Park making it an inconvenient trek from the Tents. In addition, the inmates are running the asylum with interns making random decisions each day. The first day, we just dropped in between shows yet another day they were claiming that you had to make an appointment, which was just silly. Considering how far away from the hub of Fashion Week this lounge is, EVERYONE is going to want to drop in when they actually have a few hours between shows. In addition, the event I attended was marred by a visibly flustered girl named Ashley, who made one of the most unprofessional PR moves I have ever witnessed at any event! In an ohh-so tacky turn halfway through the Twitter product seminar, she demanded that some of the participants give back the products they were given out, citing a shortage due to overbooking! It was definitely not the best look for her, Robert Verdi, or the sponsors! Once the guests were seated and participating, it was well past the time to be doing a head count! To help her out, I willing gave up my bag as I had a major event across town and didn’t want to drag the bag with me all night. But since the overbooking was the organizers faux pas, the proper way to have handled that would have been to simply get the names of people, who did not receive product, and send it to them! And I find it very hard to believe that there wasn’t enough product to begin with! A good organizer always makes sure to have a surplus on hand in the event of extra participants. I honestly, can’t think of a worst way to present a brand! It was both mortifying and tiresome to watch such ill-mannered behavior!
HOT: While many are skeptical, I find the love-at-first-sight romance between Katy Perry and Russell Brand simply adorable! Whirlwind romances can,and do, occur and can, and do, often work! I do hope that they wait for kids though, as it always better to let the flames burn a bit longer before introducing poop and spit-up to a loving household!
NOT: The new Speidi. Spencer is now married to a woman who looks like a Joan Rivers blow up doll!
HOT: Obama calling out the Supreme Court and the Republicons (not spelled wrong they are con artists!) for their blatant partisanship in his State of the Union speech.
NOT: The dopey Sarah Palin asking Obama, while addressing a room full of rampant anti-Americans, “How’s that Hopey, changey thing working for you?” was just plain pathetic and spotlighted the real difference in the two parties. What was she suggesting as an alternative? Fear-y stagnation? I am not feeling either party right now, because they are really not getting much done and are basically maintaining the status quo due to the Democrats lack of cojones and the Republicans death grip on the past. But at least the Democrats, and mainly Obama, try to uplift us with their words. The Republicons seem to still feel that their best tactic is going to be to continue on their Darth Varder-ish mantra of fear and negativity. Speaking of Darth, another Not for this week was the appearance of that evil fearmonger, Dick Cheney on ABC’s “This Week.” He ran the country into the ground for eight years during his tenure as President (yes, for those of you that still don’t know, he was actually running the country from 2000-2008!) Does anyone with half a lick of sense really care what he has to say any more? Even Elizabeth Hasselbeck, that beacon of Republiconism on “The View” seems to be backing off that one!
HOT: Apolo Ohno set to break the Winter Olympics records for most medals won.
NOT: NBC decision to air the horrific death of luge competitor, Nodar Kumaritashvili. I mean, what were they thinking? How awful to see a very young man’s final moments! Is NBC so desperate for ratings that they are going to start airing deaths? The flurry of bad decisions made by NBC executives this past year, begs for a complete shake-up of the NBC executive offices. And the truly scary thing is that more Americans were not outraged by this!
HOT: Oscar nods for “Up In The Air”, “Avatar”, Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, and Woody Harrelson.
NOT: Oscar nods for anyone involved in that trifling Ghetto mess “Precious”!
